There is a degree of confusion about when the first flushable toilet was invented. Some historians trace the origin of the first flushable toilet to King Minos of Crete who lived some 2800 years ago. It is said that the flushable toilet then disappeared for thousands of years until 1594 when Sir John Harrington built a flushable toilet known as the “prive in perfection’ for his godmother, the Queen of England. The flushable toilet, however, again went on hiatus for several hundred years until a British plumber by the name of Thomas Crapper developed a flushable toilet in 1872. It was Thomas Crapper's development of the toilet that helped establish the toilet as a fixture of everyday life. The first flushable toilets were actually considered to be status symbols in Victorian England, often having ornate designs including elaborate hand-painted decorations and complex carvings such as swans and lions that held the water basins on their backs. Today, the flushable toilet is an inherent part of our everyday lives. It has undergone constant modification and improvement, resulting in many innovations, including toilets that flush automatically. The invention described herein below pertains to such a device.
A system for the automatic flushing of a toilet is set forth and shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,603,127 wherein a tank-type toilet having one or more infrared transmitters is utilized to provide a sensed target area of approximately four feet in front of the toilet tank. The device allows for the automatic flushing of a toilet by detecting when a user has entered the sensed target area, and then flushing the toilet when the user has vacated the sensed target area.
Systems for the automatic flushing of toilets also providing sanitary flushing are generally known, and several such systems are currently in use today. One such system is set forth and shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,482,250 (the '250 patent) wherein a device contains two sensing areas, one for the sensing of a body in front of the toilet and a second for the sensing of a body part to the side of the toilet. The second sensor is provided as a way to flush a toilet without physically making contact with the toilet, providing a sanitary method for the user to flush the toilet.
Another example of a sanitary flushing system is set forth and shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,455,971 which discloses an automatic toilet flushing system which detects when a user sits on the toilet for use and, instead of operating a flush handle for flushing, performs flushing in association with the user's action of standing up to leave the toilet. Each of the foregoing inventions disadvantageously can be triggered inadvertently thus resulting in wastage of water.